


For Unto You This Day I Shall Write a Coda Made of Fic

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crack, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s05e22 Coda, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4466048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hard as he tries, Dean's still failing at the normal life Sam wanted for him. But an unexpected visitor arrives with surprising results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Unto You This Day I Shall Write a Coda Made of Fic

**Author's Note:**

> Well, lookie what I found on my laptop.

Dean's best time of day, the period where he reliably doesn't completely hate himself, is somewhere between 7:10 and 7:30 a.m. This is when he walks Ben to school, which he volunteered to do so Lisa could teach a yoga class at 6:30 for the toned, tanned lady executives here in town. 

Up until he returns from the round trip, he drinks his coffee neat. Once he's back, with a paper under his arm, it's another story. He still circles news items now and then, though he knows Sammy wouldn't approve if he knew. It's just habit; not like he's going to get in the Impala and chase anything down.

So this one morning, though, Ben is being a pain in the ass, in a way that totally reminds him of -- no. Dean steps over a wide crack in the sidewalk, thinking of it as a line of thought he's stepping over, moving past. 

"I don't want to see that, I want to see _The Losers_. It's at the $2 movies, so what's the big deal?"

The big deal is he's seen some clips on the morning shows he watches while he drinks his special blend coffee, the Irish latte. One of the actors in it looks too damn much like his old man, which will fucking break him right now, and also that ultra hot fight scene the guy has with Zoe Saldana -- well, he's pretty damn sure it will ruin Zoe Saldana for him forever. So no. Not even if the kid throws a total Sammy. 

Dean flinches.

" _Iron Man_ or nothin'," he says flatly, and suddenly this is no longer a time of day where he doesn't hate himself. He's no good for this kid. He'd hoped that he could do this, have the life Sam wanted for him and be a decent father figure to Lisa's kid, but he doubts he's doing any better a job than Dad did of hiding his grief. "Listen, I'm sorry," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I have a bitch of a headache. We should talk about this later."

Ben eases off on the pouting. "Okay. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah." Kind of crappy, giving the kid false hope; Dean's planning to make sure Lisa knows all about the fight scene that looks like some of the most smoking sex he has ever had, and he'll be off the hook.

After he watches Ben disappear into the old brick building, Dean turns and walks back to Lisa's, where he skips the coffee and starts drinking in earnest. The morning shows turn to game shows, then to soaps, then to the parade of judges with their stream of plaintiffs who seem no better than the defendants. Judge Judy has just told some guy not to pee on her leg and tell her it's raining when the doorbell rings. 

Padding to the door, Dean peeps through the gauzy curtains and sees the shimmer of blonde hair. "No magazines, cosmetics or religions," he shouts through the door, and turns to resume his seat in front of the idiot box.

More pounding at the door. "Dean!"

"Fuck off!" he shouts, turning up the television.

The pounding continues, along with the _Dean!_ s, and it belatedly occurs to him that nobody selling magazines or beauty shit or God would know his name -- unless it's the last option and there's another fricken angel calling on him. Which is an almost cheerful thought. It means he could finally shoot something repeatedly without getting hauled off to jail. 

Stalking toward the door, Dean reaches to his back waistband, but there's no gun there. Right. They're all in the gun safe he bought and installed in Lisa's garage. He settles for yanking the door open with intimidating violence.

Must have worked, because the lower lip of the the blonde girl standing on the porch starts to quiver, and silvery light glints in her eyes before a tear slips down her cheek.

"Fuck me sideways!" Dean blurts. "Becky?"

"I came as soon as I found out." She hurls herself into Dean's arms. "I'm so, so sorry about Sam," she breathes into his neck, wrapping her arms tight against him.

"Becky?" He wrenches himself from her arms. "What the hell? How did you find out?" 

"Chuck. He sent me the manuscript, his last book. With Sam and Adam and Cas and Lucifer. All of that. You did it, you and Sam. You saved the world. But god, what a heartbreaking price." Becky pulls him close again, and this time he relaxes into her hug. _Because she knows._ Everything he cannot say, that sticks in his throat when he tries to tell Lisa what he's been through, Becky knows every bit of it.

He finds himself shaking in her embrace, and she murmurs. "You don't have to say a word. You can just let it out."

He can't do that. There's this wall, it's fucking huge, thicker and longer than the Great Wall of China, and nothing will get past that. But even as he starts to shake his head, the wall begins to crumble. _She knows all of it._

"I can't," he starts to say, pushing the words past a crushing weight in his chest. "I can't face knowing he's in hell -- that he's in _Lucifer's prison_ in hell --" And this is where he crumbles, too. He snuffles wetly into her neck, and then he's sobbing and sliding to the floor, and she folds to the floor with him, softening his landing, petting him and crooning to him and letting him mourn in the most embarrassingly emo way possible. Curling in toward her, he weeps with his head in her lap, his arms surrounding her waist. She stays there, infinitely patient, until he's all cried out, head pounding and breath dieseling with dry sobs. 

Her fingers skip through his hair as she murmurs. Not _It's okay_ or _Don't cry_ or anything utterly stupid like that. What she keeps saying in her soft voice is, _I know, I know_ and _He did it, he redeemed himself and saved the world_ and _He'll always be with you_.

Dean's definitely malingering now, but he can't help it. He keeps his head in her lap, trying to match his breathing to hers, enjoying the animal comfort of having her fingers moving through his hair. 

By the time he recognizes the sound of feet coming up the porch steps, the front door is opening and the footsteps abruptly stop. 

"Who the hell are you?" Ben demands.

"Hey," Becky says in her friendly, perky voice. "You must be Lisa and Ben. I'm Becky."

"And what the hell are you doing here?" Lisa adds.

Dean pushes himself off her lap, his hair standing up every which way, his eyes bleary. "She's a friend."

"I can see that," Lisa says. Her tone is carefully even, a tone he's grown familiar with, the tone that says _Yours is a fuckup so epic that I refuse to let you see me react to it._ "I'm wondering why you didn't show up on _her_ doorstep " She huffs out a breath. "Ben, go to your room."

" _Mom_ \--"

" _Now_."

After he's gone, Dean says, "It isn't what it looks like."

"Well, judging from the tears and snot all over her dress, it looks like you were crying your heart out. But since it wasn't that, tell me what it was."

Dean mulls this over. "I guess it is what it looks like." 

"We share a history," Becky says. "Not like that, but I've known him and Sam pretty well over the years."

The tension in Lisa's stance begins to drain away. "So all the things you can't talk about ..."

"I already knew," Becky says.

As if she's just now noticing them, Lisa sets her keys on the table by the door, letting her bag of yoga gear thump softly on the floor. She drops into the nearest chair. "I guess I'm glad," she tells them both. "I was beginning to realize I'm not what you needed to draw out all that pain."

"Hey, I'm not making a play here, seriously," Becky says.

"No, she's a Sam girl," Dean says, and he can't believe it, but he manages a little smile. 

"I'm a Brothers Winchester girl," Becky corrects. She turns her face up toward Lisa. "I just found out what happened, and I had to come."

"Okay," Lisa says. "I should go in and talk to Ben."

Pulling up his tee shirt, Dean mops his face. "Why don't we get out of here for a while. You and Ben can have an evening to yourselves. I've been pretty ever-present."

"Why don't we go for a drive," Becky suggests. "If you'll let me drive the Metallicar --"

"The what?" Dean asks.

"Uh, the Impala. I need to talk to you about Chuck."

"Yeah sure." Moving toward Lisa, Dean caresses her cheek. "Will a couple of hours be enough for you and Ben to have a good night, or should I make it three or four?"

"Come back at nine," she says. She looks so sad, and so tired. "That way you can say goodnight before Ben goes to bed."

"See you then." He brushes his lips against hers, then steps backward, turning to follow Becky.

As they walk toward the Impala ( _Metallicar_?), Dean says, "Sam wanted so much for me to have a normal, happy life. I don't know that I'm cut out for either."

"You'll find it. But you can't take Sam's notion of a perfect life and try to stuff yourself into it. It has to be yours."

"I'm not sure I know how to make someone else happy," he adds. 

"God, you're morose," she says, and for some reason this makes Dean laugh. 

Handing her the keys, he tumbles into the shotgun seat, nearly scalping himself on the doorframe. 

"I'm sorry about Chuck," he says once in the Impala.

Becky moves a hand over her wheel, just the way Dean might if he'd been away from his girl for a long time. She seems to shake off a reverie, starting the engine.

"He told me what happened."

"Oh really?" Becky says, a brow arched. "What did he say?"

"He, uh, said he respected you too much."

"That _assbutt_ ," she yelps.

"Hey, Castiel said that."

"I know. I read it." She pulls the Impala away from the curb. "It kinda snuck into my vocabulary."

"So what was the real reason?"

"It was a combination of things. For one, I showed him some smutfic to give him a few ideas, and he totally freaked. He's got that whole Madonna-Whore dichotomy going, and that takes Woody Allen-strength therapy to get a guy past that. Plus he waded into this huge internet kerfuffle over fanfic. He said, among other vastly stupid things, that writing licensed shit was okay, because you were getting paid for it, but writing fanfic for free out of love was just _icky_. So when it comes to writing, it's okay if you're a whore, but not if you're a slut. And that is just so fucked up. All of those bullshit arguments, 417th verse, same as the first. It's not original, it's not work, yadda yadda yadda."

"So you dumped _him_."

"Pretty much."

Dean scratches his chin. He's not sure exactly how many days' worth of stubble resides there. "So it sounds like you know what's what on that score. Why were you wanting to talk about him?"

"Well, it threw me a little when he sent me the manuscript to _Heavy Metal Apocalypse_. Which by the way, if I get it published ever, it's getting a new title. That's just dopey."

Dean snorts a laugh. "Okay, fine by me."

"I think -- I think maybe he passed the mantle on to me. That I'm the new prophet of the Lord."

Dean's jaw drops. Well, _that_ was unexpected. "I don't, uh, I don't think I want to be in on prophetic doings anymore, if it's all the same to you."

She turns toward him as she stops the Impala at a light, meeting his gaze. "They're not world-shaking -- or world-ending prophecies. Maybe just a reunion fic, and some everyday schmoopy, porntastic curtain fic."

He has no idea what the hell she's talking about, but she looks at him with such warm affection and kindness that he feels the first glimmer of hope that he's felt since Sam disappeared into that hole.

But he doesn't ask for any glimpses into the future, and Becky doesn't offer. Instead she talks about her readings in the Winchester gospels as she finds a riverside park, easing the Impala into a space and cutting the engine. 

They sit in the gathering dark telling stories from Sam and Dean's life on the road -- small stories and epic tales and everything in between -- until it's time to head back to Lisa's and put another young boy to bed.


End file.
